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“Well, I hid Octavia’s suicide to protect the Moidores,” Araminta went on, staring at him as if he were the only one who could hear her. “And I helped you hang Percival for it. Well now that we’re finished—a scandal—a mockery”—her voice shook on the edge of dreadful laughter—“a byword for murder and corruption—you’ll come with me to the gallows for Percival. You’re a Moidore, and you’ll hang like one—with me!”
“I doubt it will come to that, Mrs. Kellard,” Rathbone said, his voice wrung out with pity and disgust. “With a good lawyer you will probably spend the rest of your life in prison—for manslaughter, while distracted with grief—”
“I’d rather hang!” she spat out at him.
“I daresay,” he agreed. “But the choice will not be yours.” He swung around. “Nor yours, Sir Basil. Sergeant Evan, please do your duty.”
Obediently Evan stepped forward and placed the iron manacles on Araminta’s thin white wrists. The constable from the doorway did the same to Basil.
Romola began to cry, deep sobs of self-pity and utter confusion.
Cyprian ignored her and went to his mother, quietly putting his arms around her and holding her as if he had been the parent and she the child.
“Don’t worry, my dear; we shall take care of you,” Septimus said clearly. “I think perhaps we shall eat here tonight and make do with a little hot soup. We may wish to retire early, but I think it will be better if we spend the evening together by the fire. We need each other’s company. It is not a time to be alone.”
Hester smiled at him and walked over to the window and drew the curtain sufficiently to allow her to stand in the lighted alcove. She saw Monk outside in the snow, waiting, and raised her hand to him in a slight salute so that he would understand.
The front door opened and Evan and the constable led out Basil Moidore and his daughter for the last time.
With fifteen William Monk novels under her belt and two more in the pipeline, celebrated mystery writer Anne Perry chats with Mortalis about her famed amnesiac detective, self-portraits, and the life of a writer.
Mortalis: You have been crowned the “queen of British historical mystery” (Chicago Tribune). That must be gratifying!
Anne Perry: I didn’t know that. It’s very nice.
M: For you, what are the ingredients of a good mystery?
AP: Tension, conflict, and characters that you care about. If you don’t care about people, it doesn’t matter who did the actual crime. It has to be about why, how did this happen? For me there has to be a distinct moral dilemma where I can believe that a person had no alternative. One reason I like writing mysteries is that it’s not just about who committed the major crime, but what you discover about all of the other characters under the pressure of investigation.
We all have things we’d rather not have made public; it might not be something seriously wrong but just jolly embarrassing. You don’t want to walk down Main Street with no clothes on. The question becomes, Will you lie to protect those you love? There’s always the temptation to evade the truth, fudge it, not to admit to something embarrassing. How honest will we be, how brave? What happens to our integrity when we’re pushed to the edge of admitting something embarrassing? Also, how will we deal with disillusion? Do we blame everyone else? Maybe we expected something unfair of someone and now must face the truth.
So I’d say it’s conflict and what we discover about the whole cast. And it must be believable. In the end, saying “He’s mad” is not an answer. And I’m very bored with “He did it for the money.” It’s been done so many times. I’m also tired of detectives who are social misfits.
M: You bring to life the idiosyncrasies and mannerisms of Victorian high society—the servants, the below-stairs gossip, the peculiar customs. (Incidentally, I love the “grave offense” of knocking on the withdrawing room door!) How did you come to understand what it was like to live and work within these great estates?
AP: It’s great fun to look at old books of manners, and there are plenty of them published—many of the best ones in America. You can set the mood very accurately by describing what was involved in doing the laundry. You didn’t just shove the clothes in a washing machine. There was a specific recipe for the type of cloth, and you had to make your own soap depending on the fabric. Then you had to hope the laundry would dry, which was not easy on a wet day, and you had to iron with two flat irons—use one while the other heated up on the stove. It took the whole day! This all set you back immediately.
On the other hand, there used to be four postal deliveries a day in London, so not everything today is better. You could invite an acquaintance to dinner by post in the morning and receive an answer in the afternoon mail. It was a wealthy society in which there was plenty of leisure time, which led to more rules to divide the up-and-coming from the not-so-good.
M: Don’t you think the ritual of calling hours would have driven you crazy?
AP: If I had been part of it, I suppose I would have known. I wouldn’t fit in remotely in Victorian society; I’d demand to be treated as an equal, not as lesser because I am a woman.
M: You would have been like Hester Latterly, then?
AP: I would like to think I would, if I had the courage Hester had. My brother is a doctor, an army surgeon. I have some skills in that arena but not like him. Whether I would have the guts for that sort of work, I doubt it.
M: You’ve written previously that The Divine Comedy, Gilgamesh, and the works of Oscar Wilde are among your favorite books; that’s a varied reading list. Are there any other books or authors that have had an important impact on your career?
AP: G. K. Chesterton. He is my favorite poet.
M: Do you like his Father Brown mysteries?
AP: Father Brown is a bit dated. It’s Chesterton’s poetry that I love: the music of it, the passion, the lyricism, but most of all his philosophy. I am still surprised when I read it and am made to think. When I’m reading for pleasure, I want a complete holiday from what I’m doing myself. In terms of present-day authors, there is nobody better than Michael Connolly, Jeffery Deaver, and Robert Crais.
M: All fellow mystery writers—how is that a complete holiday for you?
AP: They write about the present day, in cities like Los Angeles, with male protagonists, all of which is pretty different from Victorian London. Also, I think books written by men have a different flavor. Though I hope one wouldn’t know immediately whether my books were written by a man or a woman.
